Brisket Sandwiches
by Mizufae
Summary: A twist on the domestic!bliss trope, Raj and Howard attempt cohabitation. Howard is nothing like his mother. Raj just wants a nice lunch. Raj/Howard aka Woloppali Pre-Slash Multichap. Please to enjoy!
1. Chapter 1

Brisket Sandwiches

They had been fighting again. Lately it had been nonstop, the sort of fighting that was just one big, angry slow fight spread out over at least a month, if not longer. Rajesh Koothrappali was not one to sit down and be walked all over! Well, at least if the person trying to do the walking was an eighty pound man by the name of Howard. Anyone else, maybe they could leave a footprint or two.

Wolowitz had been in the middle of explaining an elaborate scheme involving dry ice, some supposedly local Suicide Girls, and what sounded suspiciously like impersonating some police officers. He was draped along the arm of Raj's couch, sucking on the neck of a beer bottle and gesticulating wildly with the other hand. Raj had had enough.

"Do you mind?" he cut Howard off mid-sentence. "Why are you getting drunk on my couch and talking about boning a bunch of tattoo-encrusted girls with self-esteem issues that you'll never get within five miles of? Don't you know I have work to do in the morning? Work to do with Sheldon?"

Howard mouthed the air for a moment in shock. "Hey, I just thought you'd want in on my sweet setup!"

"Well I don't. I'd have to be drunk to talk to them and I can't drive if I'm drunk and we're certainly not hauling twenty five pounds of dry ice on the back of your scooter."

"So you were listening!" Howard smiled expansively. "See, I planned for that. We'll get it delivered before we even arrive. I'm brilliant, right?"

Raj stared Howard down with a blank face. Howard sheepishly finished off his beer and set the bottle down on the coffee table, next to the three empty ones from earlier.

"So you just come in here, drink my beer when I can't, expect me to believe you know the home address of a Suicide Girl, make a mess, and stagger home?" Raj stood up to collect the bottles. They clinked all the way to the kitchen sink in his hands, waving around to punctuate his outrage.

"Well, no, I wasn't – you don't have to – Raj, come on!"

Raj spun around to look Howard square in his drunken eye. "Go home to your mother."

And that was the beginning of it.

Howard glinted. His eyes, his teeth, his shiny hair. He exhaled into Raj's face and it smelled like hops and pad thai. "No," he said. "I want to move in," he said.

Filling up and rinsing out the beer bottles stalled for time a little bit, but eventually Raj had to turn back around and deal. Instead of asking a question, Raj just raised an eyebrow at Howard, who had perched unsteadily on a dining room chair.

"Mom's been taking classes at Temple; she has new friends. She's even more insufferable than usual. Last night she had me spread cream on her lower back and told me she was learning about her yoni. I have to get out of that house."

Raj snorted. "Well I could have told you that."

"And I was thinking, you know, you're so busy with Sheldon and I've got that new grant money to work with, we haven't been seeing each other as much." Howard twined his fingers together, and looked down at his shoes. Then, in a smaller voice, "I thought maybe if I lived here we could stop fighting."

There was a sigh, and Raj realized it had come from himself. "Where are you going to sleep?" he asked.

There was that glinting grin again. "I'm small. I'll fit!"

"You're paying rent."

"Okay."

"You're paying half the fios bill."

"You don't have fios."

"We do now."

Raj ducked into his bedroom and came back with a pillow, which he threw straight at Howard's face. "I'm going to bed."

In the morning Howard was still there, curled up in a ball on the couch, hugging the pillow to his chest. After brief consideration, Raj filled a big glass with ice water and left it on the table within arm's reach.

***

Lunchtime included a tuna salad sandwich, featuring tomato that had soaked through the bread.

"Where's Wolowitz?" Sheldon inquired.

Raj groaned. "Sleeping on my couch. If he drools all over it, he's paying to have it cleaned."

"Well that's silly. He should choose a sleeping position that won't encourage excess nocturnal salivation if he's doing so on valuable upholstered furniture." Sheldon took a sip of his lemonade. "Not that your couch is particularly desirable. Considering that the only individuals who regularly view the couch are yourself and Howard, the impregnation of his transparent bodily fluids into the cushion fibers should not bother you on a social level."

The tomato slid out of Raj's sandwich and fell with a splud onto the tray.

***

That evening, all Raj wanted to do was watch tv, microwave something for dinner, and go to bed. Working with Sheldon could be surprisingly rewarding, but sweet bovine udders, it was taxing on the brain. He hesitated, unwilling to step out of the rusty industrial elevator that opened out onto his floor, and silently prayed that a sober Wolowitz meant an absent one.

He managed to put the key in the lock before hearing crunching and crashing noises. Angrily, Raj tried to push the door open, and found it was blocked by a pile of cardboard boxes. "HOWARD!"

"Hey, buddy! Have a good day at work? Sorry about the mess, I'll get it all cleared up by tomorrow." Howard wrenched the door open far enough for Raj to squeeze through, toppling over the boxes with a keenly applied kick. "Ooops, guess that was a load-bearing one."

Raj's living room was a disaster. So were his office, his kitchen, his dining room, his library, and his breakfast nook, considering that they were all the same place. Clothes that looked like they'd come out of the bargain clearance section of Delia's were splayed across the couch like a horrible denim rainbow. There was a silk kimono across the television and crates full of what was unquestionably porn under the dining table.

He couldn't take it. There was some kind of strangling noise that came from somewhere deep in the back of Raj's throat, and he stalked into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

Thankfully Howard hadn't used Raj's room as a staging area, and he could sink gratefully onto his bed in the dark. Raj tried to suppress the overwhelming desire to strangle Howard's bony neck.

There was a knock. "So hey, you want to order some Chinese or something?" came through the door. After a pause, "I cleared my manga off the table. You want your usual, right?"

Raj's stomach grumbled. Maybe he could sit through kung pow chicken, as long as Wolowitz was paying. He got up off the bed and straightened his sweatervest.

"You'd better have cash," he told Howard as he quietly closed the bedroom door behind himself. Howard just waved over his shoulder as he ordered on the phone. Raj plucked the shiny kimono off of the television, pinky-up, and tossed it over his shoulder.

***

Thirty minutes later and Raj was sitting through Howard prattling on about his day. "Ma had a conniption fit. She almost wouldn't let me take my clothes. I still have more back home."

Raj choked on some rice. "This isn't all your stuff?"

"No no, I just ported over the essentials, today." Howard propped his feet up on a box clearly labeled "T&A 1998-2002" and twirled a chopstick between his reedy fingers. Raj grumbled.

The evening progressed, and Raj tried to act normally, watching tv and making his lunch for the next day, as Howard puttered around behind him, unraveling some uniquely complex organizational scheme.

"What happened to the cafeteria macaroni and cheese being the only food-group you ever needed?" Howard asked from the office as he placed everything purple into a pile.

"I'm trying to cook more. Which you would have known if you ever listened to me. I can't afford to keep eating out all the time." Raj frowned and sliced some cheese.

Moving on to the pale greens in the breakfast nook, Howard hesitated. "Is that why you wanted to take cooking classes?"

"Yes." The cheese seemed awfully lonely, so Raj added some mustard.

"I thought you just wanted to pick up chicks while you were playing with knives."

"No, Howard, that's how I convinced you to come with me. Too bad you didn't make it; the vegan guy stole all our women."

There was a moment in which Raj wrestled with a sandwich baggy and Howard contemplated his belt buckles by theme. "My mom would teach you how to cook, but then I wouldn't want to eat anything you make."

Raj snickered. "I don't want to get drunk and hit on your mother while she's showing me the secrets of kugel tacos, thanks."

"Hey, don't hit on my mom, period."

"Fine! It's not like she's all that womanly anyway, I bet if I squinted I could have a sober conversation with her."

"Don't talk about Mom like that!" Howard's squawk came from the bathroom, where he appeared to be testing the capacity of the plug for his industrial-looking blow dryer.

"I'm going to bed," Raj announced, tucking his lonely cheese sandwich into a Doctor Who lunchbox. "If I don't have a floor by tomorrow, you're paying double rent."


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: This chapter's a bit shorter than the last, but it felt like a good stopping point. Next chapter will be more plotty, I promise, but I have this thing where I like to write character development. It's crazy I know. Anyway I just wanted to say thank you so much for reading! For those of you who are fans of my iCarly stuff, sorry I'm not writing for that fandom right now, but Big Bang Theory is actually a personal favorite show of Dan Schneider's, so you might like it too! I'd absolutely LOVE if you would leave me a review. Please don't be afraid to criticize me, I promise that I can take it! This is my first story for BBT fandom, and one for a slightly obscure ship, so I'm not in comfortable waters. I'd really like to know how I'm doing! Again, thanks for taking the time to read, I hope I at least make you smile. **

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The mustard with the sharp cheese was salty and sour. Raj quietly gagged half of the sandwich down as Leonard yammered on about something laser-related. There was a plastic clunk and a lunch tray appeared next to him, with Howard attached.

"Hello, Wolowitz; I trust that the ill effects of your previous evening's inebriation have sufficiently passed?"

Howard shot Raj an exasperated sigh. "Yes, Sheldon, thank you for asking."

"I suppose at this juncture I should say that you're welcome, but the ulterior motive behind my inquiry was to determine your ability to join us in Call of Duty tonight." Sheldon sucked on the straw in his can of V8 and waggled his eyebrows at Leonard, apparently quite pleased with his attempt at conversational pleasantries. Leonard resisted rolling his eyes and scooped some meatloaf onto the back of his fork.

"Sure, yeah, I just have to see if I can take the afternoon off. I have to finish unpacking or Raj is going to double my rent." He stuck a thumb in Raj's direction.

Leonard choked briefly on his meatloaf. "Huh?"

Raj found himself enveloped in half a hug as Howard's arm bent around his shoulders. "We're roomies now!" Howard explained. "By the way, Leonard, can I store some of my comics at your place? Raj doesn't have the room."

"You're what? And no! I don't want Penny opening up the linen closet to find your porn organized one fetish per longbox!"

Sheldon interjected, "So are you in for Call of Duty? Because if you aren't we have to arrange a fourth and I don't think Penny can handle the complexities of this particular simulation without some social discomfort, which Leonard informed me makes him less likely to achieve optimal conditions for coitus."

Leonard coughed.

"Apparently that's bad."

Howard's arm moved back from around Raj's shoulders to his turkey cranberry sandwich as they stared blankly at Sheldon across the table.

Raj piped up for the first time at lunch. "We can play Call of Duty tonight; I'll help you unpack this weekend."

"Oh, goody," declared Sheldon. "Raj, I'm glad you're being so flexible about this. Some people can be quite uptight when dealing with a new roommate."

Raj caught Leonard's wince, and then his stomach grumbled. Before he knew it, half a turkey cranberry sandwich was in front of him. "Thanks, dude."

"Mi almuerzo es su almuerzo," Howard said.

***

Living with Wolowitz wasn't so terrible, after they had finally found a place for everything. Leonard relented and allowed Howard to store some of his gaming peripherals at his place, but "nothing that vibrates on command!" and it all had to be thoroughly washed. Mostly, though, unpacking involved Raj listening to Howard whine about his mother while he integrated their DVD collections.

"Then the other day she actually demanded that I play bridge with her group. Like I'd spend time with three old yentas who have nothing better to talk about than their soap operas and their grandchildren's brises."

"Oh, sure. Should we integrate our Babylon 5 boxsets per season, or should they be in discrete sets?"

"Let's use them like bookends between the Comicon photos. Oh, speaking of which, you know the guy who sold me the working Green Lantern ring?"

"Yeah, wasn't he getting married to the woman dressed like Carmen Sandiego?"

"They're having a baby!" Howard gestured expansively.

"No. Really?"

"We should send them a card."

"That'll be nice. Do you really need your Magic binders?" Raj frowned at the musty box full of carefully organized cards.

"Raj! I can't leave my collection at that woman's house. She found out they were valuable one day and has been trying to sell them ever since."

"Why don't you sell them?"

Howard looked agog. "Why don't you just rip my heart out already?"

"Fine, we'll keep them behind the X-files."

"Fine!"

"So your mom really wanted you to be a fourth for bridge?"

"Yeah, can you believe it? That game is so unsophisticated. I don't know why she thought I'd go for it."

"She is a woman of mystery."

***

After the fifth evening of ordering takeout, during which Raj and Howard quibbled over their oldest disagreement, (Howard wanted Indian, Raj demanded anything but,) they sat grumpily on the couch, picking at their dinner with plastic forks.

"I don't know how Greek is the compromise between Indian and Japanese food." Raj took one of Howard's cucumbers and dipped it in some yogurt.

Howard swallowed a slice of lamb. "Approximate equal distance from India in the opposite direction."

Raj nodded, really it made perfect sense. "I have got to learn how to cook."

"Why can't you? It's not such a big deal. Just apply heat in a controlled way, basically. Follow some instructions. Easy!"

"When you grow up eating food you don't like very much it's a little more complicated than that. Besides, I'm an astrophysicist, not an engineer. I make calculations about heat, I don't apply it to anything."

Howard snorted. "I've noticed."

"What's that supposed to mean? Anyway you can't cook either."

They looked at each other through squinted eyes. "Is that a challenge?" Howard asked.

Raj leaned back onto the sofa cushions. He could smell whatever it was Howard used to smooth out his hair. "No, it's not a challenge. I have to learn to take care of myself."

"Your parents should have never gotten broadband."

"Damn straight."

Howard curled one leg under himself and turned to face Raj. "I mean, they're getting into your head!"

"My family is very important to me." It was a line he had said innumerable times before.

"Yes, so you moved to the other side of the planet from them. It makes perfect sense, really. The skies of New Delhi are so lacking in comparative visibility."

"So sometimes they meddle! But it's not like being able to feed myself would be a bad thing."

"My mother always says that if you don't want to do something, the worst thing to do would be to learn how to do it. She hasn't mowed the lawn once in her entire life." Howard flexed. "That's how I got my biceps so ripped."

Raj groaned. "Fine. Then you'll just have to cook for me."

"What? But I thought this wasn't a challenge!"

"It isn't. But if you want me to stop whining, you know what to do." Raj stood up and took his leftovers to the kitchen. "You could always ask if Sheldon would let you sleep on his couch for a third of the rent," he suggested as he wrapped up leftover gyro for lunch the next day.

Howard didn't even respond. He just grabbed the Star Trek box set. "You want to watch the one where they meet Spock's mom, or the one where Chekov teaches the natives the vays of love?"

"Oh, I love The Apple! Chekov, when will you learn not to feel up pretty girls in front of impressionable indigenous peoples?" Raj hopped back onto the couch, excited.

"You just like Chekov because he's the guy with an accent."

"No, that's why you like him. I like him because of his neato haircut."

"Are you trying to tell me something?"

But Raj wasn't paying attention. Instead, he was humming along to the Star Trek theme song. Howard joined in.


End file.
